


Lights Go Down, Knives Come Out

by simplesetgo



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-22
Updated: 2011-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-18 15:31:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplesetgo/pseuds/simplesetgo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Cara’s senses never lied: Kahlan was watching her.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Lights Go Down, Knives Come Out

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short canon insertion piece taking place sometime between 2x03 "Broken" and 2x06 "Fury". Call it the Mord-Sith version of fireside bonding.

Cara was far from a stranger to sharing a mattress and sheets, but a Confessor marked her strangest bedfellow yet. She doused the flickering lamp and slid under the covers to settle equably on her back. Kahlan was lying still and silent beside her, as she’d been since she wordlessly entered the room. Cara had heard a furiously whispered conversation taking place directly before and wondered what exactly Richard had told Kahlan to persuade her to do this willingly.

Moonlight from the window cast sharp shadows across the walls. Crickets sang, a dog barked in the distance, and tension settled thick in the air over the bed. Cara’s senses never lied: Kahlan was watching her.

So she waited, eyes fixed on the ceiling, her breathing deceptively calm. And still her skin tingled under the weight of the Confessor’s gaze.

“Are you going to sleep or stare at me?” Cara finally asked the still night air, paying no respect to the previous quiet. Mord-Sith did not whisper. “Inns _are_ made for the former.”

She finally looked over when Kahlan didn’t reply. The Confessor’s eyes were closed.

****

Cara woke to a sound from the bed beside her. Too soft to be a shout but no less urgent or desperate, it was a pathetic noise, something that reminded her of sniveling pets terrified of her displeasure. And then Kahlan thrashed, limbs flailing as her torso twisted.

Cara pushed up onto her side, watching her quick breaths with a frown. Maybe this would stop on its own; she would vastly prefer not to interfere.

But the nightmare stretched on, and there was no chance of Cara falling back asleep with this agitated Confessor beside her. She considered leaving the bed in favor of the rug on the floor, but even there she’d still have to deal with the tiny sounds Kahlan was making, like she was trying to speak and couldn’t.

She shoved Kahlan’s shoulder, roughly, to no response. She slapped Kahlan’s cheek and the Confessor just whimpered.

Cara reached for an Agiel, sighing as the sharp sparks of pain woke her body up completely. She pushed off the covers, shifted to sit on Kahlan’s hips, straddling the sleeping brunette to hold her down, and thrust the weapon into her side.

Kahlan erupted from the bed, a violent mass of dark hair and bared white teeth. Glinting in moonlight, Cara glimpsed a blackness in her eyes and, in that frozen moment, realized her grave mistake. She raised a hand to protect her neck but it was too late—Kahlan’s own wrapped tightly around her throat.

They shared rapid breaths, Kahlan’s hair fluttering from her face. Cara couldn’t see the color of her eyes in the shadows, but she wasn’t confessed. Not yet. She swallowed, knowing Kahlan could feel her throat move against her palm, and leaned forward slightly. As long as her death wasn’t an accident, she was content. The mattress creaked underneath them.

“Your life means so little to you?” Kahlan hissed. “I could have killed you.”

“A standing offer,” replied Cara. “You still want to. I see it when you look at me.” Kahlan released her neck and said nothing. Cara sat back. “If you think I’ll betray the Lord Rahl then do it,” she challenged. “Confess me, stab me, I don’t care. Either trust me or kill me. This in-between is exhausting.”

Kahlan looked down, rubbing at her wrists as if she’d been cuffed or tied up and freshly loosed. “Trust needs to be won,” she said at length. “It doesn’t mean anything if it’s given.”

“It’s too bad you’re not Mord-Sith. A Keeper’s pact would serve both.”

“That sounds…barbaric.”

Cara canted her head. Confessors and Mord-Sith had studied each other for centuries, but there were still varied secrets. Some were meaningless rituals, traditions forgotten by both orders, but Cara had performed the pact twice before. Once she’d used it to swear an oath, and once she’d used it as a weapon.

Her muscles bunched and tensed, and then she lunged, knocking the startled Confessor onto her back. Her fist found the Agiel in the sheets. Kahlan’s extraordinary grace in battle was notably absent, here, in such a sudden and vicious bodily struggle. Cara endured a hand clawing at her cheek on its way to her throat, but her Agiel found its mark on Kahlan’s temple and pressed there. Kahlan’s body arched and flopped down under Cara, her face drawn into a grimace. Yet the only sound was a drawn-out hiss of pain and, subdued, she stayed still when Cara removed the Agiel. She dragged it down Kahlan’s body, always a hair’s breadth from touching her skin, until its tip hovered directly over Kahlan’s heart.

Kahlan’s eyes turned hard and her jaw clenched. If she breathed too deeply, the weapon would touch her skin and she would die.

“A successful Keeper’s pact is the ultimate statement of mutual trust,” Cara said calmly, over the soft whine of the Agiel.

Kahlan swallowed. “Why do I think this ‘pact’ of yours involves you actually killing me?”

The Agiel raised from her chest, ever so slightly, and Cara shrugged. “It would. Two Mord-Sith each place their Agiel at the other's heart, and if each truly trusts the other, the Breath of Life is exchanged by both at the same moment they share death. Their journey to the Underworld and back is shared in turn.”

“How is that any different from my hand on your throat, and…this?” She nodded meaningfully at the stationary Agiel over her own heart. “A passed chance is the same thing.”

“No. Sharing death and life is not the same as anything. I would know.”

“Well. I don’t have the Breath of Life.”

Cara thought for a moment. “Don’t be greedy with what I give you and you should have just enough to give back to me.”

Kahlan looked at her, into her. “You’re serious.”

Cara reached for her second Agiel.

“Wait.” The Confessor grabbed her arm, held it tight and still, and looked down, lost in thought.

“All your confessed,” Cara said suddenly, feeling like a fool. “They’ll be freed.”

Kahlan shook her head as she sat fully upright. “It’s not that. Confession is tied to the soul. As long as I come back, my confessed will remain so.” She straightened her shoulders, and clear blue eyes pierced Cara’s own in the dim light. A long moment passed with the Confessor searching her gaze. Cara held her stare, and counted heartbeats. “I want to trust you,” said Kahlan at length. “I want to understand how Richard can. Prove yourself to me…Mord-Sith.”

Cara wordlessly joined her Agiels together side by side, one reversed, and held them out from her chest, nodding at Kahlan. The Confessor set her jaw and leaned in.

“Open your mouth,” Cara told her quietly. Their faces weren’t a hand’s width apart, but the Confessor’s lips were set in a grim line. Slowly, they parted. But Cara still waited.

Kahlan nodded, and Cara gathered the Breath of Life in her lungs, instinctively calling it forth. It left her in a whispering rush to bleed through Kahlan’s lips. Then she drove the Agiels into Kahlan’s chest and pressed her own against them.

That explosion of pain in her core was something she would never get used to. Dying always hurt. It was like the body’s self inflicted punishment for giving up, for being too weak. Pain radiated from her chest to every muscle in her body as everything stopped. Cara’s vision turned black, and she felt Kahlan’s forehead come to rest on her own.

****

There was little that grated on Cara’s nerves more than the wails and screams of the damned. The Underworld stretched out before her in all its violent and sickening glory, green fire licking up from black chasms and countless writhing bodies as far as the eye could see. Kahlan grabbed at her forearm and Cara chose not to shake her off. They stood naked together on the edge of a great cliff, up above it all. It was as if the Keeper knew they didn’t belong down with the rest, not yet, and so kept them separate from the torment.

But Darken Rahl, by his victorious tone behind them, was apparently not given any such information regarding the length of their stay. “Oh now, this is not good,” he said mockingly, drawing the words out as he strolled toward them with red robes and a smirk. “It would seem my dear brother has lost most of his debatable protection at once. Well, his loss is my gain.”

Cara seized Kahlan’s bare shoulder as she stepped between Rahl and Kahlan, giving the former her back. The Confessor’s grip on her arm tightened as she looked at Cara, almost in shock. “Don’t breathe in too deep when you go back,” Cara warned her sharply. “Don’t waste it. If you want me to live, if you want to bring me back, don’t breathe too deep.”

Cara was holding thin air. Kahlan’s form melted and faded, like a fine mist drifting upwards. Then she was alone with the angry specter of Darken Rahl. Cara heard tiny scratching noises, like small claws on rock. Lots of them.

****

Returning to one’s body was only slightly less unpleasant than leaving it. It was always madly disorienting, especially when such little time had passed. She jerked free from Kahlan’s lips and sucked in a lungful of air. Deep and steady breaths gave her body time to adjust, time for life to reach through her limbs.

When the world finally seemed to settle right-side-up, Cara looked at Kahlan. The Confessor stared back at her, wide-eyed, and then enveloped her in a crushing hug that lasted until Cara pushed her away—which wasn’t long. There was residual fear in Kahlan’s features, but it was quickly fading to relief. “Oh,” she said breathlessly. “I thought you might not come with me, and then that you might not make it back. But you did.”

Cara nodded. “I trusted you,” she said simply. She cocked her head and held her palm out in warning when the Confessor looked dangerously close to hugging her again. Cara should’ve realized a short jaunt to the Underworld would fill her up to the top with all kinds of feelings. She sighed. “You’ve never died before,” she guessed.

Kahlan shook her head, looking a little embarrassed—likely about doing such a thing on a near-whim. “It really hurt,” she admitted.

Then Cara remembered what she’d left, and her skin crawled as she nearly jumped from the bed, frantically feeling for bite marks on her feet and legs. There were none, of course, but she seemed to feel them all the same. She shuddered involuntarily, then fell back on the bed, her head meeting the pillow. “Rats,” she explained, before Kahlan could question her. “The former Lord Rahl knows me…very well.”

She stopped just short of saying that he knew her weaknesses. But it seems she didn’t need to, and her face burned when she realized what side of herself she’d just displayed to Kahlan. Fear, panic, like that of the helpless child she once was.

Kahlan, for her part, just nodded and laid down beside her. “So what does this change? I don’t feel any different, except very glad to be alive.”

Cara turned her head, lifting an eyebrow. “You seemed relieved when I came back.”

“I didn’t want to be responsible for your death.”

“So it was just guilt, then,” Cara pressed.

“I don’t know, Cara,” she snapped, looking away. “I apparently trust you with my life, and I would rather you be alive than dead. But that doesn’t mean I like you.”

Satisfied, Cara drew her legs up a bit, shifting to make herself comfortable, and closed her eyes. She wouldn’t have things any other way.


End file.
